Abstract

     In this article, we present an analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) security and abundance in Southwest Finland. We hypothesised that the drastic increase in telecommuting caused by the pandemic would encourage many to update obsolete WLAN devices, improving the state of WLAN security and increasing WLAN deployment in the survey region. To test our hypotheses, data from seven WLAN surveys carried out between February 2020 and October 2021 was analysed. Surprisingly, although the results show a 50.2% increase in WLAN deployment during the second and fourth waves of the pandemic, this had no significant effect on WLAN security in the survey region. The survey data shows little change in the number of unencrypted networks and networks configured with vulnerable encryption protocols. While most of the located networks were encrypted with the secure WPA2 protocol, the number of networks configured with the newest WPA3 has not notably increased.

Introduction

     In March of 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak as a global pandemic. In many countries, one of the immediate effects of the pandemic has been the closing of businesses and schools in efforts to prevent the infection from spreading. For many, this has meant a move from offices and schools to working and learning remotely over the internet. According to Eurofound’s COVID-19 e-survey data [4], 36.5% of the European respondents, and over 60% of the Finnish survey respondents, had started working remotely during the spring of 2020 because of the pandemic. Before the pandemic, only 15.3% of the Finnish and 15.8% of all European survey respondents had telecommuted regularly. According to a Pew Research Centre survey of over 5.800 working adults in the United States, 71% of the respondents were working remotely during the pandemic, whereas only 20% of the respondents had worked remotely before the pandemic [13].

Conclusions

     We presented an analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on WLAN security and abundance in Southwest Finland. We set the premise for this study by defining two hypotheses: the vast increase in telecommuting due to the COVID-19 pandemic 1) creates an incentive to upgrade obsolete devices, thereby improving WLAN security, and 2) results in an increase in WLAN deployment as large portions of the population work and study remotely. To the best of our knowledge, no similar research about the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on the WLAN landscape has been published.

     Our research data shows that while WLAN deployment increased 50.2% during the second and third waves of the pandemic, there was no advancement in the state of WLAN security. The findings suggest that although new wireless devices and networks were increasingly deployed during the pandemic, it was not done to replace outdated and insecure devices, indicating deficient wireless networking security awareness among the general population. WLAN connections should always be protected with either the WPA2 or the WPA3 encryption protocol. Legacy devices supporting the deprecated WEP and WPA-TKIP protocols should be upgraded. The use of public unencrypted networks should be avoided altogether. In this time where we are increasingly dependent on wireless internet connections, and the number of WLAN capable devices is increasing by the day, raising WLAN security awareness is crucial for cybercrime prevention both during and after the pandemic.